


it hurts too much (that’s when it starts to fade)

by plinys



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 17:26:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1613285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She doesn't think anything could be worse than waiting for him to wake up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it hurts too much (that’s when it starts to fade)

**Author's Note:**

> written because that finale gave me too many emotions to deal with and yeah - this happened. 
> 
> SPECIAL THANKS TO JANET FOR BETA'ING THIS FOR ME SUPER LAST MIN AND IN A RUSH!

“He might never recover completely,” they tell her, “and if he does, he will never be the same.”

She was prepared for that, more than prepared for it, so prepared, that Skye had teased her of studying for an exam the way she blazed through medical books that could give her any insight into helping him. Every possible scenario had been outlined, flashcards had been made, and too often she had remained by his bedside rehearsing just what she would say when he woke up.

Some moments she would imagine herself telling him what she didn’t tell him at the bottom of the ocean, didn’t realize until she had nearly lost him.

Othertimes she imagines slapping him silly, telling him to never worry her like that again.

Most of the time though, she just prays that he will wake up, she’s never been particularly religious, but for him she would be. If that meant that he would just wake up.

She feels like she’s floating the second they tell her he’s woken up. She’s never ran so fast in her life, leaving the attendant who stopped by in her lab, dropping the beaker she had been working with to the floor and not even caring about the potential damage.

Nothing matters in that moment, except for him.

“Fitz,” she says, hugging him tightly to her, her heart constricting. She’s going to start crying all over again, and the medical staff is trying to keep her away, but for the first time in forever she thinks she’s going to be alright.

Then the moment shatters, when he asks, “who are you?”

“It’s me,” she says, pleading for him to remember.

She just never expected to see him like this, staring at her face in confusion.

“Amnesia is not uncommon in people who have experienced similar trauma,” they tell her, “there’s a change he could get his memories back.”

They don’t want to tell her how unlikely that is, but she looks up the statistics herself. Stares at the numbers on her screen, wishing they were easier to deal with. They aren’t.

She stays with him for his recovery, helping in any way she can, searching his eyes for a flicker of remembrance and being greeted with a blank stare in return. He treats her like everybody else at their base, greeting her with a hint of his former smile whenever she enters the room.

He’s there.

He’s alive.

But he’s not Fitz.

“This is normal,” they tell her, “steps on the road to recovery.”

The road to recovery is a long journey, one that gets harder and harder to believe in.

He calls her Skye once on accident, and she must have flinched back so quickly, because suddenly he looks awful.

“I’m sorry,” he tries to explain, “I sometimes get people confused, it’s hard meeting so many new people.”

She tries not to take too much offense, tries not to let it bother her too much.

She doesn’t succeed.

Two weeks later, somebody makes a call and there’s a woman with brown curls framing her face and a Scottish accent, who tells them that she’s here to take her boy home. The doctors believed it would be a good idea, to take him to some place familiar. He remembers his mother, he remembers everything before SHIELD it would seem.

“Often times the memory blocks out certain information because it believes this to be the cause of the trauma,” they tell her, “this is not as uncommon as it would seem.”

It has nothing to do with you, is what they want to say. She can see it on the edge of their tongues.

But she was the one who met him on the  first day of the academy, she was his best friend, or at least she was supposed to be.

She wasn’t sure where she stood anymore.

She feels like she’s drowning again.

And the surface is something unreachable.

When he leaves, she sits on the landing pad that the helicopter that took him away had flew off from. She sat there for hours until somebody came outside to get her. Ignoring worried looks was harder than it would seem, and hugs are not as magical as her fellow agents would like her to believe.

“You should see somebody,” they tell her, “a therapist could be provided for your emotional needs.”

She doesn’t talk to her therapist. She doesn’t talk to anybody.

There’s only one person she would want to talk to, but she can’t talk to him.

Instead she buries herself in her work. She feel like she’s drowning, but this time it feels nice. It’s a pleasant distraction from what is eating her insides.

She can almost forget that she’s missing somebody, until she turns over her shoulder, to proudly announce her latest discovery only to find that the lab is empty.

Somehow she moves on.

Somehow she makes it through each day.

“You look thinner,” are words they never tell her, “are you sure you’re feeling well?”

Instead, “It’s good to see you moving on,” they tell her, “you’re looking better every day.”

Until, nobody seems to remember that she didn’t used to work alone.

One day, she’s getting coffee, while at a conference in London - SHIELD work, technically. She’s been up all night, so when she first sees him she thinks its a mistake, that her sleep addled mind is playing tricks on her again.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

Except the barista calls out his name, “Fitz,” and he hops up from his seat to grab the drink from her.

It’s been years, too many years to think about, and he’s standing right before her. In one of the those god awful jumpers that she used to steal from him. He wears glasses now, his curls still a mess that falls over his forehead.

She wonder if he still takes his coffee the same way.

“Fitz,” she all but breathes out, barely a whisper, she doesn’t expect him to turn around, but he does.

Across the room their eyes meet, for a second she feel like it’s old times all over again.

Then, his brows furrow in confusion and he takes a step towards her.

And she knows, no matter how much she doesn’t want to admit it.

He still doesn’t remember her.

He’ll never remember her.

Her fight or flight responses kick in a moment later and she’s out the door, not even carrying about leaving the drink she’s already paid for behind.

She just needs to get away from there. Out of that coffeeshop, out into the street where she can breathe, where she doesn’t feel like drowning, where he isn’t standing there looking at her like he’s never seen her before.

Her heart is pounding so loudly that she doesn’t hear the door open and close once more, or the sound of approaching footsteps.

Though she hears him when he speaks up, saying, “Jemma,” calling at her back when she turns away, and for a second she can’t breathe.

She feels like she’s in a pod at bottom of that ocean all over again, because he says her name with such clarity like he had said it millions of times before. Like he wants it to be the last word he ever says.

_Jemma-_

She feels like they’re back at the academy, him whispering her name in the cold night air trying it out for the very first time, before wrinkling his nose.

_Jemma, nope I can’t see it, let’s stick with Simmons._

She feels like they’re at CyOps, she’s elbows deep in some mysterious creature’s innards and he’s sitting on top of the counter, covering his nose and whining.

_Jemma, please can you not do this in here!_

She feels like they’re on the Bus once more, team gathered around, and him saying her name like it’s his favorite word in the world.

_Jemma, you didn’t steal my tea again, did you?_

So, she turns around, turns back to him. Watches as his face lights up when she does so, pride in his eyes, she didn’t realize how much she missed his smile until she was standing here before him.

“That’s your name, isn’t it,” he asks eager.

And she nearly trips over herself responding, repeating, “yes,” over and over again, nodding because she can’t stop smiling.

She couldn’t imagine anything that would make her smile fall off of her face, until he speaks up again and says, “you were one of the nurses who took care of me after my accident, I remember now. I don’t know how I could have forgotten.”


End file.
